This guide is my capstone project for the 2021-2022 SPARC Open Education Leadership Program, and aligns most closely with the program outcome of “assess[ing] local needs and barriers relating to open education, and design an initiative to address them, while centering equity and inclusion.” When it comes to open textbooks, I argue that we shouldn’t be replicating the definition and the parameters of traditional textbooks but instead be fully utilizing all of the affordances of open textbook publishing. Textbooks tend to take the universal approach to education, as they’re designed in an attempt to meet all of the curricular needs of students across the country. However, the customizability of open allows us to focus on local approaches to our curriculum. A major difference between four-year universities and community colleges is that community college students heavily represent the communities in which the college is located. At East Los Angeles College, the majority of our students are from our communities in the greater East Los Angeles and Southeast Los Angeles communities. This guide hopes to provide specific examples of how we at East Los Angeles College (ELAC) can emphasize our community and local needs when creating and adapting OER.